California Teacher Placed on Leave for Asking If School Would Allow Walkout Against Abortion

Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty16 Mar 2018

Julianne Benzel, a history teacher at Rocklin High School in Rocklin, California, was placed on leave for two days after she asked her students whether the school would allow a walkout against abortion, as it had against guns.

Benzel appeared on Fox and Friends on Friday and told host Steve Doocy that the hypothetical abortion protest had come up during a class discussion in preparation for Wednesday’s national student walkout for gun control:

I just wanted to make sure that my students were informed. And so I just said, “Are you guys aware what is happening next wednesday?” And very, very few of them were. So I said, “Well, this is a brief overview.” I said, “I want you to please go look deeper yourself. And I also want you to go home and have a dialogue with your parents, and let your parents know this protest is taking place.”

And I opened up the discussion for, if schools, not only just our school and our administration, but across the country are going to allow one group of students to get up during class and walk out to protest one issue, would they still give the same courtesy to another group of students who wanted to get up and walk out to protest. And I used the example of abortion.

Benzel said that two students and one parent complained, and she was placed on leave as a result.

Benzel said that she had been asked to come back to work at Rocklin on Friday, but that she had taken a day off for her “mental health” and looked forward to returning Monday.

Breitbart News noted Thursday that the gun control walkout was likely unconstitutional “because the government — in this case, public schools — made a special accommodation for a political viewpoint that it would not make for the opposing view, or for any other view.”